arts & life

theater

Albom
On Ice

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

The author and

playwright tries his

hand at musical

comedy — inspired

by hockey.

details

Hockey, The Musical! runs
May 19-June 19 at the
City Theatre in Detroit. $39.50.
(313) 471-6611;
olympiaentertainment.com.

36 May 12 • 2016

A

suggestion of Mitch
Albom’s Jewish studies
comes across — with a
light-hearted twist — in the story-
line of the soon-to-debut comedy
Hockey, the Musical!, a multi-
media theater piece that showcases
his script, original music and
lyrics.
The overall idea is to offer sports
buffs — and sports tenderfoots
— a fun time as they respond to
jokes, tap their feet to fresh and
familiar music and watch celebri-
ties getting into the act via a big
screen behind the onstage action.
“Bringing God into the story
was another comedic device,” says
Albom, whose show runs May
19-June 19 at the City Theatre in
Detroit, where he promises a joke
every 10 seconds.
“One day, God looks down
and sees that there are too many
sports. He needs to send a lesson
to mankind and decides to wipe
out hockey. A fan begs to save the
sport by finding 100 pure souls in
it, and God says, ‘Find five; you’ll
never find 100!’”
The takeoff on Lot and the

Sodom and Gomorrah story is one
example, Albom says, of “some of
my Judaic upbringing in writing
that scene.”
Albom chose hockey as the
sport in jeopardy because he
considers it the “quirkiest.” A
player doing something wrong,
for instance, gets put in a box.
People throw octopuses on the ice
for good luck. The locker room
resounds with players speaking
different languages.
There is song material in all
that, and delving into music is not
new for Albom, 57, known for
newspaper articles, a talk radio
show, books (nonfiction and fic-
tion) and the play Ernie, about
Detroit’s late and legendary sports-
caster Ernie Harwell.
“I started in music, and my only
dreams, when I was a younger
man, were to do things in music,”
says the Brandeis University alum,
whose wife (Janine, a singer)
knows life is going smoothly
whenever he can find time to be at
a keyboard. “I began working with
a playwright on a musical very
early in my career when I was a

“It’s Spamalot with
hockey sticks,” Albom says.

musician in New York.
“This, to me, is getting back
to something that I started more
than 30 years ago and put on hold.
Fortunately, I have been given the
opportunity to realize a very old
dream.”
Albom, working at a home
piano, put together almost 25
songs for the show. He wrote the
music as well as the words for
about a third of them. The others
are famous songs for which he
rewrote the lyrics, spanning eras
from that of Al Jolson’s “Toot Toot
Tootsie! (Goodbye)” to the more
contemporary sounds of Jefferson
Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop
Us Now.”
“There are several show-stop-
ping songs,” Albom says. “One is
‘When You’re a Wing,’ sort of a
takeoff on the Jet song from West
Side Story and all about being

a Red Wing fan — with a lot of
dancing, local references and octo-
puses in the middle of it.”
Another number, using the mel-
ody from “Tonight You Belong to
Me,” sums up Albom’s experience
with sports: Although sports come
across as antagonistic, they can be,
at their core, unifying pursuits.
While four main male cast
members (taking the stage with
one woman) represent differ-
ent cultural backgrounds —
American, Canadian, Russian and
African American — they also
represent a production intent to
spotlight local talent.
“With the exception of one
actor stepping in for an origi-
nal cast member who injured
his foot, all the actors, stage
managers and crew are from
Michigan,” says Albom, who
structured the piece in one act.